Lawrence said that the film is an allegory: “It depicts the rape and torment of Mother Earth … I represent Mother Earth; Javier, whose character is a poet, represents a form of God, a creator; Michelle Pfeiffer is an Eve to Ed Harris’s Adam, there’s Cain and Abel and the setting sometimes resembles the Garden of Eden.”

Aronofsky said that the title’s exclamation mark “reflects the spirit of the film” and corresponds to an “exclamation point” of the ending. The director discussed the film’s unusual capitalisation in a Reddit AMA, saying, “To find out why there’s a lowercase ‘m’, read the credits and look for the letter that isn’t capitalised. Ask yourself what’s another name for this character?” The characters’ names are all shown in lower-case, except for Him.

The lighter which appears throughout the film bears the Wendehorn, a symbol believed to represent “the cooperation between nature’s eternal laws, working in effect and in accordance with each other.” One of the film’s unexplained elements is the yellow powder Lawrence’s character drinks, which The Daily Beast suggests is a reference to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”.